One-handed gaming?

[superluser]

Hey, I'm really enjoying the Penumbra games, but there's one thing that really bothers me. I don't have fine motor control in my left hand, so whenever there's a puzzle involving things like turning (using the mouse) and running (using the keyboard), it becomes nearly impossible. I have to turn myself, take my hand off of the mouse, put it onto the keyboard, run a bit, take my hand off the keyboard, put it on the mouse, turn, take my hand off the mouse...

Alternately, I can hold down one key with my left hand, but that would preclude running or even pausing from walking.

Years ago, I learned how to do this pretty well in Wolfenstein all on the keyboard. Unfortunately, Penumbra doesn't let you assign the turn function to the keyboard. Has anyone thought about this sort of situation and worked out ways of dealing with it?

[Sexbad]

When I first read the title, "You creepy, sick fuck" sifted through my head but this actually sounds like it deserves some attention. But I don't have a clue on how to fix it so this post is worthless.

[SHODANFreeman]

Maybe get a mouse with several buttons and map the buttons to the different walk keys?

[superluser]

When I first read the title, "You creepy, sick fuck" sifted through my head

I do admit that every time I write about this issue, I think about how the subject will appear to other people.

Maybe get a mouse with several buttons and map the buttons to the different walk keys?

Maybe. My mouse has left/right scrollwheel tilt functions that Penumbra can't pick up, so I'd need to make sure that the mouse actually worked with Penumbra before buying something that has fifteen useless buttons. Besides, I really don't want to wind up with a WarMouse. It just looks un-fun, and the list price of 80 bucks is definitely un-fun for getting past one or two tricky puzzles in a game.

I actually have the same trouble in Half-Life, but at least in Half-Life, I can slow down the timescale for the game, and that usually makes the problems solvable.

[SHODANFreeman]

Another solution might be some kind of mouse emulation software. With it, you would be able to emulate mouse movement with a keypress. I can't recommend any, as I've never used one, but I know that they exist so you can search for one if it sounds like a good solution.

[Yuhaney]

How about changing keyboard and mouse into gamepad?

[superluser]

How about changing keyboard and mouse into gamepad?

I know that there are some threads about doing exactly that, but how exactly would I accomplish setting that up? Do I just use an xbox-USB cable and recompile my kernel to use the proper drivers?

That's pretty simple, and that may be an optimal solution. Thanks, I'll look into that.

[Yuhaney]

Here's one, and probably the best, way to do this:

First things first:
Buy yourself a program called Xpadder.

Wired Xbox 360 Controller:
Plug it into your PC's USB port and run the Controller through Xpadder.

Wireless Xbox 360 Controller:
You need to buy this and plug it into your USB port, after that, you need to run the Controller through Xpadder.

...or if you want some other Controller, then just make sure Windows supports it and you can basically run it through Xpadder.

Now you might ask: "What Xpadder exactly does?"
In a nutshell: It simulates your keyboard and/or mouse, so that you can do basically all the same things with your controller than you can do with your keyboard and mouse (playing games, using web browser, using text programs, everything you can do on Windows).

It costs you few bucks, but I can assure you: It's worth the money!
I use Wireless Xbox 360 Controller on my PC with Xpadder and everything works perfectly.
BUT, I didn't get Penumbra: Overture to work well with it (swinging hammer/pick-axe didn't work that well).
...but other users here on the forums said that they got Penumbra to work without any problems with Xpadder.

My problem might mostly be that I didn't knew how to setup Xpadder correctly when I tried Penumbra with it.

[superluser]

Here's one, and probably the best, way to do this:

First things first:
Buy yourself a program called Xpadder.

Does Xpadder work with Linux? If not, then I'll have to find another way. No worries, there are kernel drivers for the Xbox controller, and I'm sure I can work it out somehow.

If anyone has other ideas, though, I'm not too keen to bake a new kernel unless I have to.

[SHODANFreeman]

AFAIK, Penumbra does not support gamepad use natively, so without keyboard/mouse emulation software such as Xpadder (which is not available on Linux to my knowledge), it would do you no good to add driver support for the controller.